Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Source: http://www.darkmother.net/pages.cfm?ID=6&mm=1 (http://www.darkmother.net/pages.cfm?ID=6&mm=1) an excerpt from dark mother by Lucia Birnbaum

Dark Mother: African Origins and godmothers
from the prologue

In my sicilian/american childhood in Kansas City, Missouri, the favorite exclamation of my mother, grandmothers, and aunts was "Bedda matri!" Origins of this invocation to beautiful mother - expressing wonder, astonishment, gratitude - did not become clear to me for a long time, not until the 1990s, when my research on italian feminists and black madonnas coincided with rereading african scholars and studying western geneticists and archeologists.

The hypothesis of this book is that everyone's genetic "beautiful mother" is african and dark, and that she is the oldest divinity we know. At the beginning of the third millennium, the consensus among world scientists is that Africa is "the cradle of the most ancient living beings that paleo-anthropologists are willing to call Homo," and that Africa is the place of origin of modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens. In the paleolithic epoch, signs of our oldest mother were the color ochre red (signifying blood of childbirth and menstrual blood) and the pubic V painted in african caves. After 50,000 BCE, migrating africans took these signs to all continents, where they may be seen today in the caves and cliffs of the world.

This study is an intercultural and interdisciplinary exploration of the african origin of the dark mother, and her continuing memory to the present. The first part of the book presents contemporary findings of geneticists and archeologists. The rest of the book documents, in my research and that of other cultural historians, the persistence of the belief in our oldest mother and in the values associated with her - justice with compassion, equality, and transformation.

Belief in the african origin of world civilization, a civilization centered on a dark mother, was widely held in the ancient world, up until the first centuries of the common epoch when clerical and secular authorities destroyed her images and attempted to suppress her memory. Despite this campaign, her memory and values stayed alive in everyday and festival rituals of subaltern cultures of the world. In the late 20th century, the memory of the dark mother surfaced in writings of african and africanist scholars, in research of western scientists, and in women's movements of the world, particularly in that stream, becoming a river, called women's spirituality.

In the enterprise of rescuing the ancient belief in african origins of world civilization, the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop in the 1980s are foundational, but many african, african american, asian, and other world scholars have participated, notably W. E. B. DuBois earlier and Asa Hilliard, Molefi Asante, Robert Thompson, Ivan Van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, Danita Redd, Henry Louis Gates, and Cornel West in our time. The memory has inspired the writings of african american women, e.g., Audrey Lorde, Alice Walker, Toni Morison, and bell hooks. Luisah Teish has been pivotal in recalling the charms, rituals, and seasonal celebrations of african civilization, as well as the nuanced nature of gender in african understanding, a theme evident in in the flowering of lesbian and gay scholarship.

Two african american women who have been significant in rescuing the evidence of the african origin of world civilization are Drusilla Dunjee Houston earlier, and Matomah Alesha today. Their works exemplify african oral and nonverbal traditions, traditions that become powerful when complemented, as they are by Houston and Alesha, with other ways of knowing. In 1926 Houston wrote Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, exploring what scientists today confirm, the centrality and geographical breadth of early african civilization. In February 2001, as this book was being prepared for publication, Mara Keller referred me to a notice of the publication of Matomah Alesha's The First Book of the Black Goddess. Grounded in african oral and nonverbal traditions, as well as other ways of knowing, Alesha's book aims for wholeness.

In this spirit of wholeness, Matomah Alesha's book and this book - and hundreds of similar studies yet to be written grounded on african origins and african diasporas - may be considered complementary. Matomah Alesha writes in african oral and nonverbal traditions that are still alive. I am a sicilian/american woman recovering my almost entirely suppressed sicilian ancestry, a journey that has taken me, via a circuitous route, to Africa. A primary aim of this book is to inspire others to track their origins and their diasporas, which, in the hypothesis of this book, will lead them to Africa. The corollary to this hypothesis is that all humans carry the memory (often submerged) of the dark mother and her values.

In the spring of 1988 I was a resident scholar at the American Academy in Rome, when I thought to go to Sicily to observe rituals of easter week. I took my professional attitude, my notebook, camera, and tape recorder to Trapani, where on Thursday of holy week I watched the procession of the black madonna. And was changed forever.

Trapani is located on migration and trade routes of what is called the "african coast" of western Sicily. As the sirocco, the hot wind that comes up from the african desert, sent my senses reeling, I watched the mesmerizing spiral dance of the procession of the black madonna. Looking about me I noticed that everyone along the route of the procession was in tears . . . and that I was in tears. In retrospect, this experience seems to me an overwhelming bodily memory of the ancient african dark mother.

When I returned to Rome, I dreamed of my mother as a black madonna, and the next day learned she was dying. In the next year and a half, I wrote Black Madonnas. That moment on the african coast of Sicily, and the dream of my mother as a black madonna, have motivated my research ever since, deepening my training in intellectual history with what we are coming to recognize as many ways of knowing.

In his 1963 study of prehistory to the conquest of Canaan, Emmanuel Anati, italian archeologist, and today premier authority on the rock art of the world, stated that the oldest religion we know centers on a woman. "A developed religion with all beliefs, rules and conventional rites appeared for the first time only thirty thousand years ago, as attested by repeated finds of mother goddess figurines and by the art in sanctuary caves." In his 1995 book on the rock art of the world, Anati concluded, "All of us derive from this common ancestor."

In the 1970s and 80s, Marija Gimbutas, lithuanian/american archeologist, gathered evidence in archeology and mythology that the earliest divinity of Old Europe was a woman. In the anxious male backlash against feminism of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Gimbutas' work aroused hostile male response, as well as a following among many women scholars, some of whom developed the academic study of women?s spirituality. In 1993 Elinor Gadon, art historian and scholar of the hindu goddess, founded the program in women's spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

In 1995 in a convergence of african, asian, and western women and men scholars, the Journal of African Civilizations stated, "modern humanity originated in Africa, African people are the world's original people." Further, "the light of Sumerian civilization can only be attributed to the arrival of Black migrants from Africa's Nile Valley." In their book that same year on early african presence in Asia, Ivan Van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi concluded that earlier studies of african origins had now been confirmed by geneticists, that matrilineality characterized early african cultures, and that geneticists' confirmation in the DNA of african migrations to all continents was supported by material evidence of african presence in southeast Asia, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, and the "jewel in the lotus," ethiopian presence in the civilization of the Indus Valley.

Perhaps the greatest casualty of cultural and academic wars in the west of the last quarter century was a defensive turning inward that prevented beleaguered cultural groups challenging the dominant paradigm, white male supremacy, from seeing that there were allies across the lines. Women scholars did not realize that men scientists were confirming the presence in prehistory of a woman divinity who preceded a male divinity. The reluctance of some women scholars to acknowledge that the earliest woman divinity was african and dark may be attributed to the institutionalized racism of the west, as well as to unexamined premises of the now discredited multiregional theory of human origins.

African origin of the mother divinity of prehistory was obvious to Cheikh Anta Diop. In his 1981 study, Civilization or Barbarism. An Authentic Anthropology, the senegalese scholar placed a photo of a contemporary south african woman alongside a figurine of a goddess found on a 25,000 BCE path of african migrants into Europe. Similarity of body type is striking.

In 2001, many scholars and artists across the world are recovering the evidence of a woman divinity in prehistory and history, joining a large grassroots movement of people who find the theory compelling. The hypothesis of a prehistoric woman divinity has stimulated new thinking, generated new questions, and may be the most fruitful research hypothesis of our time. The theme may also offer a unifying metaphor for our troubled world.

In the south and east of the world, images of a venerated dark woman of a thousand names are commonplace. What may be new today is women's scholarly interest in the subject, a good deal of it by western women who have lived in a dominant motherless culture for a long time. Women of the north and west of the world, struck by the implications of a woman divinity whose civilization preceded patriarchal world religions, pose questions which are not news to women of the south and the east of the globe. The subject takes on a momentum of its own. Women of the south and east, a little irritated by women of the north and the west "discovering" the subject, take a fresh look at what they consider everyday knowledge.

Interest in the woman divinity, whom "new age" and other theorists call "goddess," third world scholars call "mother," and I call "dark mother", is particularly vibrant in the San Francisco Bay area. This is not to understate wide interest in this subject throughout the United States, and the world, but to offer a specific case. On the west coast of the United States, among those studying prehistory from a feminist perspective, are Joan Marler, presently writing a life and times of Marija Gimbutas, Betty Meador, jungian scholar and therapist who has published a study of Inanna of Sumer, China Galland, who has written a highly popular study of Tara and the black madonna. The Serpentina series created by Dianne Jenett and Judith Grahn brings together grassroots as well as academic researchers, as does the Lilith series founded by Deborah Grenn-Scott, and books and workshops of Vicki Noble, Starhawk, and others. Elinor Gadon has followed her widely read Once and Future Goddess with research on the hindu goddess, and a study of the sacred male.

My own independent research, which began at the end of the 60s as a search for my sicilian grandmothers, has become a journey on which I encountered italian feminists, and wrote a book about them, then the experience on the african coast of Sicily impelled me to write a book on black madonnas. At the beginning of the third millennium, I am sending this book, dark mother, to the publisher, knowing that the questions she evokes are endless.

My work, and similar research by others, seem to me part of an underground stream of submerged wisdom that is rapidly rising throughout the world. The nature of this phenomenon defies early definition, but its contours may be suggested in doctoral dissertations on women's spirituality. Some that I helped guide in Elinor Gadon's cohort of students at the California Institute of Integral Studies include Valerie Kack Brice on dolmens and menhirs: older women and veneration of saint Anne in Brittany; Peggy Grove on gender motifs in north australian aboriginal rock art; Holly Reed on descent and ascent in women's psychological development; Miri Haruach on the ancient queendom and contemporary relevance of the Queen of Sheba; Dianne Jenett on the Pongala menstrual ritual of Kerala, South India; Judith Grahn on metaformic theory and menstrual rituals of Kerala; Katarzyna Rolzinski on daughters as caregivers of dying mothers; Michele Radford on the heart in hindu mysticism; Trish Grame on spiritual autobiography inferred from her sculptures and paintings, Jennifer Colby on Tonantzin/Guadalupe and transformational art. Dissertations in progress include Jean Demas on Pele of Hawaii, the U.S. constitution, and land rights; Louise Pare on bodily movement as transformative spiritual practice; Leah Taylor on spiritual autobiography as performance art of a jewish daughter; and Jan Marijac on the "end poverty now" initiative of an internet company.

Since 1999 I have been teaching in the California Institute of Integral Studies' women's spirituality program directed by Mara Keller, who has written a poetic and definitive scholarly study of the greater mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, and designed a challenging course of study for graduate scholars. The faculty of this program includes Arisika Razak who brings the ancient wisdom of midwifery and the bodily wisdom of the dance to her classes in women's sacred arts, integral visions, and contemporary womenss spirituality; I bring to my classes research on the dark mother, theorists and methodolologies of many ways of knowing, Sicily as a case of subaltern cultures venerating a dark mother, the dark mother as an emerging issue in the humanities, and the dark mother as symbol of transformation in the third millennium.

Also in this program, Joan Marler, intellectual heiress of Marija Gimbutas, brings this legacy to her classes in archeomythology; Eahr Joan has created Regenesis, a CD-Rom encyclopedia of women?s myths and symbols; Charlene Spretnak teaches Mary and modernity and ecofeminism; Angana Chatterji?s anthropology classes study cross-cultural issues in social and environmental justice; Rina Sircar teaches spiritual transformation in buddhist psychology, Tanya Wilkinson, the psychology of women, and Jennifer Berezan, women?s sacred liturgy.Workshop presenters at CIIS place the academic study of women?s spirituality in the company of acclaimed writers, painters, and scholars, notably Alice Walker, Mayumi Oda, Riane Eisler, Susan Griffin, and Elinor Gadon.

In 2001, theses and dissertations I have mentored, or am mentoring, suggest the reach (often into other programs) of the study of women's spirituality; e.g., Angeleen Campra on "persistent and insistent" Sophia; Susan Carter on the japanese sun goddess Amaterasu; Donna Erickson on the history and contemporary relevance of trance healing; Jayne DeMente on a gender and diversity balanced curriculum for our youth, Marguerite Rigoglioso on Demetra and Proserpina and the Lago di Pergusa in Sicily; Gail Williams on her spiritual journey and transformative art; and Chandra Alexandre on Kali and black madonnas . . .

In the program in women?s spirituality at New College in San Francisco, Judith Grahn, Ani Mander, Dianne Jenett, Elinor Gadon, Margaret Grove and others teach archeomythology, art, poetry, metaformic theory, et al. At Sonoma State University, Dianne Jenett directs a weekend cohort in women?s spirituality. At these schools as well as at CIIS, african americans and other scholars, bring a double consciousness (ethnic and spiritual) to the subject; e.g., Ida Dunson documents the racism on U. S. census forms, and records voices of african/american women?s spirituality. Ethnic consciousness informed by knowledge of prehistory has spread from african/american women to other ethnic groups. This double consciousness, a concept first articulated by W.E.B.Du Bois, is evident in the contemporary work of many scholars who bring an ethnic perspective, as well as awareness of multiple ways of knowing, to their research.

Looking to my own italian/american ethnic group, a spiritual and ethnic double consciousness was early present in the Beat poetry of Diane Di Prima, later in her La Loba series. A triple consciousness may be glimpsed today in the writings of Rose Romano, poet and novelist, who searches for her great grandmothers in Africa, her grandmothers in Sicily, and her mother in America. A many-faceted consciousness is apparent in the research of Marguerite Rigoglioso, who participates in archeological digs in Sicily and wrote an M.A. thesis at CIIS on Lake Pergusa at Enna in Sicily, relating world mythology to contemporary issues. Louisa Calio's epic poem of her journey finds the "heart waters" of all humans in Africa. The dark mother informs Chickie Farella's plays, Giovanna Capone's poetry, Francesca Roccaforte's photography and writing, Diane Marto's performance art, and Joie Mellenbruch's biography of her sicilian/american mother. A double consciousness of african and sicilian inheritance has motivated Patrizia Tavormina to change her name to Nzula Angelina Ciatu. Not confined by gender boundaries, the dark mother has inspired the plays of Tommi Avicolli Mecca, paintings and poetry of Gian Banchero, poetry and scholarship of Justin Vitiello, and memoirs of Louis G. Chiavola. Louisa Calio suggests how the study of women's spirituality has deepened the social science mantra of race/gender/culture into profound understanding: "When love calls one past time, past place, gender or race/unto itself, we find our true self/our oneness again."

We have learned to study women's spirituality, not with universal abstractions, but with attention to class, age, and beliefs, as well as variables of race, gender, and culture, coming to a deeper understanding of race as one human race, while keeping in mind the enormous importance of difference in "racial" experience, gender as largely socially constructed, and culture as many-layered, requiring the study of subordinated as well as dominant cultures. We have come to understand that class takes many shapes, that age, or generational group, informs experience, and that beliefs, including those not conscious, are central to understanding one's self, other people, one's culture, other peoples' cultures, and work for a better world.

Personal journeys, sometimes unexpectedly, lead to wider implication. Elaine Soto, artist and thealogian (who has loaned her paintings of black madonnas to this book) searched in Puerto Rico for the black madonna for whom she is named; now she paints dark woman divinities of the world. I wrote a study of black madonnas of Italy, then was drawn to their origins in Africa and to research the theme of this book - prehistoric african migrants took signs of the belief in the dark mother to all continents, where the belief has persisted to the present in the art, folklore, and political hopes of subaltern cultures of the world. Lydia Ruyle finds dark women divinities everywhere, sews their images onto banners, and takes them to enthusiastic audiences all over the globe.

Women's spirituality, a field of study with ancient roots, is changing the way we look at everything. Karen Smith, trained in women's spirituality at CIIS, wrote a doctoral dissertation at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley on the pagan underpinning of veneration of saint Margaret. In Italy I am sometimes called a teologa, or woman thealogian, a startling term to me for my work as a historian tracking the the african dark mother from prehistory, through history, to the present.

At the beginning of the third millennium, violence may cloud our vision, but I am heartened that men as well as women scholars of many cultural groups are embarked on similar journeys. Stewart Brand, a leader of the whole earth movement of the 1960s, encourages us to think, as do many scholars of women's spirituality, and peasants the world over, in the perspective of the "long now," simultaneously embracing prehistory, history, the present, and responsibility for the future.